1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method, a computer program product and a system or, respectively, an apparatus for the transmission of data from a computer system to an output device, particularly print data to a printer device.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printer device is connected to many computer systems. Different print data format have established themselves depending on the system environment. For example, the PCL and postscript print data formats are standard in the Windows® environment. Given these print data formats, the data (documents) to be output are sent to the printer completely packed for printing.
In contrast to the PCL and postscript formats that have just been described, print data can be separated into resources (scripts, forms, layouts, etc.) and variable data given other print data formats such as AFPDS (Advanced Function Presentation Data Stream) or IPDS (Intelligent Print Data Stream). The resources and the variable data are thereby merged in relatively late processing steps, i.e. only shortly before the printing. European Patent Document EP-A-0 131 966 discloses a corresponding printing system that receives a print job containing a plurality of documents from a host computer, whereby form data and variable data of a document are transmitted separately from one another. The form data, as well as data that occur multiply in a plurality of documents, are transmitted only once per print job, are stored in the printing system and are employed for printing a plurality of individual documents. The variable data, in contrast, are transmitted once per document.
Computers in a typical office environment (referred to as an office domain) are frequently equipped with a Windows® operating system or similar operating system such as Linux® and Macintosh®. The PCL and postscript print data languages are standard in this office domain, i.e. given relatively low printing outputs up to approximately 40 pages per minute. In contrast, the AFPDS (Advanced Function Presentation Data Stream) and IPDS (Intelligent Printer Data Stream) data streams are standard in the high-performance printing field above 40 pages per minute.
Specific properties of the data output given windows-like operating systems as well as their operating systems such as, for example, the program Word for Windows®, the print languages such as PCL® or PostScript® allocated to them, become especially clear given printout of series documents, i.e. given the use of what is referred to as the mail-merge function. Such series documents are usually composed of individual documents that are composed of static, repeatedly reoccurring data (referred to as a master or, master document) and modifiable/variable data that are introduced into the master or, respectively, into the master document. With reference to the overall document, the variable data in a series document generally only amount to a fraction of the data quantity. The static part thus defines the necessary performance parameters of the system (including, for example, the RAM memory, disk storage, transmission capacity, etc.) in order to achieve a performance-suited printing speed.
Relatively small documents, i.e. individual pages, reports or books (up to approximately 300 pages) can be printed without further ado as packed documents. In contrast thereto, printing series documents in this way can lead to substantial time delays because the static data must be continuously transmitted from the generating computer system to the printer device, i.e. with every individual document.
Another problem given this way of printing is the design of documents with auxiliary information, for example linking images in or the introduction of forms into the documents. These auxiliary information are frequently not produced together with the document to be printed out but often derive from a different data source and are sometimes designed in an involved way in order to be able to be employed for a plurality of applications.
When printing out documents from user programs, for example from Word for Windows®, the auxiliary information are previously generally inserted into the document via an editor (for example, via the Word program). When this document is to be multiply output, particularly as a series document, then there is again the problem that the auxiliary information must be processed given each document, i.e. the data stream repeatedly contains the same information and, thus, redundancy.
There is the same problem when individual forms, banner, header or trailer pages are attached to the document via a Windows printer driver.